Getting rural India to register for Aadhaar, the unique identification number scheme, is going to be a rewarding experience for banks. Leveraging on the government’s financial inclusion agenda, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has decided to pay Rs 50 per enrolment to banks and Life Insurance Corporation of India, which are acting as its registrars, for signing up residents till March 2011. Besides, any person who is below...

A worried government has put on fast track the proposed bill to regulate micro-lenders, as it seeks to ensure that over-regulation by states does not kill the sector that is envisaged to play a big role in furthering financial inclusion. The finance ministry could move a bill in the winter session of Parliament that will make Nabard responsible for regulation of all non-profit microfinance institutions structured as trusts, cooperatives, or mutual...

Even before the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) finalizes the guidelines for handing out new bank licences, its draft proposal has evoked unease in the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard), which oversees the country’s 82 regional rural banks (RRBs). Nabard has taken exception to the Banking regulator’s proposal to allow industrial houses to take over RRBs and convert them into full-fledged banks, saying such a move could dilute...

Eminent economist and Vice-Chairman of the Kerala State Planning Board Prabhat Patnaik said on Saturday that the euphoria in official circles over financial inclusion has risen because of the “systematic scaling down of institutional credit to the peasantry and other productive sectors in the last two decades”. Delivering the centenary lecture dedicated to the memory of Prabhat Kar, a pioneer of the trade union movement in the Banking industry, Mr....

In a few days from now, women could account for 52 per cent of all local bodies. They are tailors, farmers, accountants, legal clerks, homemakers, vendors and activists. There are M.Com degree holders alongside poor women from deprived backgrounds. Together, they make up the most highly educated women candidates fighting local body elections anywhere in the country. There are nearly 40,000 of them contesting the polls across more than 1,200...